On 21 July 2020, the US Attorney’s Office in Spokane, WA, unveiled a sweeping indictment accusing a pair of Chinese hackers of conspiring to steal trade secrets from a number of American pharmaceutical companies and research institutions, including biotechnology companies working on potential COVID-19 vaccines (1). Although the hackers apparently did not succeed in their attempt to obtain vaccine data, their years-long conspiracy involved other attacks on the pharmaceutical industry — and netted them troves of sensitive commercial information. Among…